**Happy Birthday!!**

Happy birthday to me and dad!! I am now 23, dad is a ripe old 49!!

*the birthday celebrants*

*HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME--my gifts: shoes, belt, cookbook, luggage locks, national geographic best of international faces book, necklace, 2 pairs of earrings, 3 greeting cards, amplemann keychain, amplemann bag, spanish birthday letter*

On Friday night I celebrated my birthday with my classmates here. We went out to dinner at a German restaurant a couple of blocks away from my house, then had dessert and a little wine/tea at my apartment, then half of the group went out dancing at Havana, a latin nightclub.

Dinner was really nice, especially since we were the only customers there for most of the night. The staff was really flexible with us, especially with the vegetarians or those that only eat certain kinds of meat. The only problem I had with the restaurant was that when I made the reservation, the waitress said, "Oh, it must be your 18th birthday!!" Um, no. That was 5 years ago. It's not the first time people have thought I was so much younger than I am-- in Bremen I ordered a beer, and they carded me. In Germany, the drinking age is 16. So, at 22, they thought I was 15. I'm not really thrilled about it, and my classmates carried out the joke by toasting to my 18th birthday :)

*a slightly dark picture of dinner! me, weichun, olya, kujtime, ryan, mixaela, daria, cindy, anitha and felipe (kristina took the picture)*

*part 1 of dinner (later I had schnitzel and bratkartoffeln)*

*weichun and me at dinner*

*cindy, daria and anitha*

*kristina and me at dinner*

At my apartment, we just relaxed for a little while with some ice cream, tea and wine. It was really wonderful to have people over-- no one had seen my apartment before, and I was thrilled to have energetic guests! While we were all hanging out, I was talked into demonstrating belly dancing, as was Olya, and then Anitha was coerced into showing us Indian dancing. Luckily the two guys who came along were in the other room the whole time.

*kujtime, anitha, cindy and olya at my house!*

*showing the little bits that i know*


*now it's olya's turn to belly dance*

*anitha's indian dance-- it's sideways at first.... sorry...*

Lastly, I went dancing with Kujtime, Felipe, Ryan, Anitha, and Michaela. We went to a latin nightclub, but since we were there kind of early, the music wasn't the best. But we all had a great time letting it loose on the dance floor!

Sunday, my real birthday, I went out early to walk around and then go to church. The church was really great, and it was my first time there. I had met a couple of people in a Bible study who went to this church and I'm really glad they invited me. Everyone was super friendly and genuinely happy to see me there. I think I met over 20 people from around the world, and the service was given in 3 languages (in German, with small areas of the congregation translating quietly into Chinese and an African language). Unfortunately, I didn't realize how long the service would be (4 hours!!!!) and had to leave as soon as it was over for my date with Julian. I promised that next week I would stay for cake and talk to everyone afterwards. It was a really nice birthday present from God to meet other Christians who were so passionate about Him and about others!

Later, I had a movie date with Julian :)
We call on Skype, make the webcam picture of each other small and watch the same movie from the same website, while we watch each other at the same time. This week I get to pick the movie: Vantage Point.

*waiting for our movie date to begin*